Recent years have seen a proliferation of equipment for both business and home use which allows communication functions to be remotely implemented rather than requiring a person to be in a particular location such as their home or office. Also, miniaturized dictation recorders have been provided which allow the user to record dictation at a plurality of remote locations for later transcription when the recording medium of the recorder is subsequently transported to a transcribing station.
It is known in the art to provide telephone interfaces with dictation equipment at a fixed location which allow a user to operate dictation equipment remotely over telephone lines. It is known to provide control of dictation recorder functions over telephone lines once an incoming call has seized the dictation recorder by the dictation recorder detecting either dial pulse sequences or dual tone combinations provided by conventional dual tone telephone dialing systems.
Recent years have also seen the development of different types of telephone answering systems which will automatically answer an incoming call, provide a recorded message to the caller, and subsequently provide a recording function to allow the caller to record a message for the called party.
In most business applications using remotely operated telephone interface dictation equipment, it is usually the case that a single recording machine will provide satisfactory access to a plurality of dictators which seek to use the equipment. Most commonly, several persons might wish to record dictation during a period in which an office is closed (for example, a weekend) and the provision of a single machine will provide sufficient access for all of the users.
However, in conventional remotely operated dictation equipment interfacing with telephone lines there is only one recording medium available for all of the potential dictators to use. In practice, this constraint results in a single recording medium (such as a cassette) containing a plurality of different types of dictation from a plurality of different dictators. Many offices have internal operating systems which require particular transcriptionists to transcribe the dictation of particular dictators. For such an office to use a conventional remotely operated telephone interfaced dictation system, the recording medium must be passed among various transcribers or appropriate interconnections between the recording equipment and transcribers must be sequentially switched in order to maintain the normal flow of office work. Heretofore it has been necessary to provide a plurality of separate dictation recorders interfaced to telephone lines in order to overcome this limitation of conventional remotely operated dictation recording apparatus.
A limitation of conventional telephone answering equipment has been the inability to select a particular message that will be provided to an incoming caller. It is known in the art to provide a single telephone answering device having a plurality of different answering messages recorded thereon but such devices require selection of one and only one message to be used when the machine is left unattended. For example, one message might be appropriate when the attendant will be absent for a relatively short period of time and another message could be selected which is appropriate for a longer absence of the attendant. However, to change the message, it is necessary to be physically present at the device in order to operate selection apparatus which will select a particular message to be used when incoming calls are answered.
In many business environments a plurality of incoming trunks from a telephone central office are provided to a particular business location. These trunks may be dedicated lines to a particular telephone or, more commonly, are inputs to a business private branch exchange (PBX). It is common in business installations to have particular incoming trunks designated as "private lines" of certain important individuals within the organization. In other business environments a plurality of business operations may be operated by the same personnel at one location. It is often the case for such a business environment to have different trunks listed as the telephone number for the different business operations. Conventionally, an incoming call will be answered by an announcement of the particular business operation which corresponds to the trunk upon which the call was made.
In using conventional telephone answering equipment in such business environments, it has been necessary to either select one particular message which will be provided on all incoming trunks or to provide a plurality of individual telephone answering machines in an environment of dedicated trunks. The provision of a plurality of individual telephone answering machines is expensive and requires that an entire telephone answering machine be provided for each individual trunk for which a distinctive answering message is desired. The aforementioned shortcomings of conventional remotely operated dictation equipment and automatic telephone answering devices are such that the cost of operations tends to increase linearly with the number of individual recording media desired (in the case of dictation equipment) and the number of individual trunks which require distinctive messages (in the case of telephone answering equipment).
It is therefore desirable to provide a device which may be readily interfaced with telephone lines and which will provide a plurality of different recording media to different dictators but will not unnecessarily duplicate expensive mechanical and electronic components as is the case when a plurality of complete and distinct dictation recorders are conventionally provided. It is also desirable to provide a telephone answering system which can provide one of a plurality of distinct messages, depending on the trunk upon which the call is received but which will also not unnecessarily duplicate mechanical and electronic components.